Conservative British MP, Kemi Badenoch, insisted that Critical Race Theory is somehow illegal, so I’m just going to save this rebuttal here: This is a Twitter thread from Kojo Koram – @KojoKoram – professor of law Birkbeck: “A thread on the new bogeyman of “critical race theory”: Kemi Badenoch. Watching
Continue readingAuthor: Marie Snyder
A Puff of Absurdity: Michael Sandel’s Tyranny of Merit
I haven’t yet read his newest book, but Michael Sandel is everywhere these days promoting his new book. An excerpt from a Guardian interview: Sandel charts the rise of what he sees as a corrosive leftwing individualism: “The solution to problems of globalisation and inequality – and we heard this
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Imagine If Teachers Made the Decisions that Affect Teachers
So now the government has overruled regulation 274. I wrote about it ages ago, again firmly planted on the government side!! I’m really very, very pro-union, honestly, but some things just don’t make sense to me. At the time, I was watching several LTO teachers in my building who knew
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Does Teaching Effectively Legitimize Ford’s Plan?
What Doug Ford’s team is doing right now reminds me of Bojack Horseman, from the end of the first season on, when absolutely everybody just starts saying “Hollywoo” after the ‘D’ in the big sign goes missing. It becomes the accepted reality. So many are openly just accepting that kids and
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Putting Your Own Mask on First
Teachers are a hardy bunch. We have self-trained ourselves to remain polite and calm in the face of abuse. On my first day of teaching, ever, I wrote Miss Snyder on the board, and a faceless voice from the back of the room said, “Oh good, she’s not married. No
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Fogginess of These Times
I had laser surgery over a decade ago and love not wearing glasses, but I’ve started wearing my sunglasses regularly, even on my walk to work just as the sun’s coming up. It makes no sense to have a barrier to our nose and mouth but leave the most defenceless
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Oh–What’s a Teacher to Do?
Starting next Friday, secondary students in my board will be forced to be in a room with about 15 other students they might not know, many of whom will take off their masks for a 45 minute mid-morning snack deemed necessary to get them through to lunchtime dismissal. They’re not
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Risk Assessment for September
I have two weeks left before going back to school in person. I’ve been writing on social media and sending emails and signing petitions because this plan in Ontario doesn’t feel remotely safe. I’ve even jumped queue and wrote to the upper echelon of my school board in an attempt
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On a Radical Vision of Future Earth
I grabbed this book, by meteorologist Eric Holthaus, as soon as it went on sale, excited to check out the new vision of how we can all better live together. There’s lots of information for the uninitiated, and then it becomes sort of a fictional narrative. There are no characters
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Hedges – the Last Word on Cancel Culture
Having a mass of people able to “cancel” someone in power can seem like a fantastic form of fluid democracy when it shuts down something harmful in a harmless manner, like people reserving space at a Trump rally they have no intention of attending. But it can be dangerous that
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Some Paintings
I got on a painting kick this week. I haven’t picked up a brush in years, but, seeing as I have nowhere else to go, I gave it a whirl. It started with my obsession over a photograph of Charf Lloyd taken by Kirk Tsonos. This is my rendering of
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Learning History
I made a little history quiz, just for fun, for people to see how much they know about Canada’s history of horrific treatment of Indigenous Peoples as well as our history of slavery and internment camps. I mixed in facts about America at many points just to give people context. Because
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On McQuaig’s Sport and Prey
Linda McQuaig’s newest book, The Sport and Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich are Stealing Canada’s Public Wealth, is a fast read full of local history and written as history should be written, as colourful stories about fascinating people! But, in order to try to remember any of it, I’ve whittled
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Laws and Common Sense
I’m thankful that my city council decided to make masks mandatory starting July 13th, even though I know a few, like the Regional Chair herself, were hoping that people could be persuaded to do the right thing without the law getting involved. Three weeks ago, our region launched a #FaceMaskFriday
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Another Rant About Overpopulation Arguments
I don’t actually care that much about overpopulation, not nearly as much as I care about re-regulating industry with climate a top priority and changing economic policy to decrease inequities, but there’s such a frustrating argument I’ve seen a few times on social media and ranted about it before, but
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Found Letters from 1944: Frank and Ray and Johny
My daughter just found an old tin in the back of a cupboard. I have no idea where I got it, but it has two photos and two letters: Frank and Ray? or Johny? Both letters are addressed to Mr. F. Krizoski / Kresky / Krizusiki, 46 Cherry Street, Kitchener,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: An Eye for an Eye in Cancel Culture
Some finish that with “… leaves the whole world blind,” but that somewhat belies the meaning of the phrase. The idea is that we should never take a drop more than equitable retribution. It’s was written in the Code of Hammurabi almost 4,000 years ago: “If a man put out the eye
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Eriel Tchekwie Deranger and El Jones on #CancelCanadaDay
Migrants Rights Network hosted an online teach-in for “so called Canada Day” with two revolutionaries: Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a Dënesųłiné (ts’ékui) member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, and Executive Director of Indigenous Climate Action, from Treaty 8 land, and El Jones, a spoken word poet, educator, journalist, co-founder of the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Remember Climate Change?
We have a strong survival instinct that has us focus on immediate dangers at the expense of potential long term dangers. So we’ve been immersed in trying to solve Covid19 issues and BLM issues to stop people from dying right in front of us, and I’ve been rambling on about
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: In Retrospect: School in the Time of Covid
This video about online learning, “numb” by Liv McNeil, is making the rounds: This has been a difficult time, and the video is cathartic for some. But first a bit about the video structure as a short film: Some things were fantastic, like the sound of kids laughing as she’s
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